Three decades after Afghans first started migrating to Islamabad, their influence on the cultural canvas of this young city is most recognisable in its cuisine. Afghan chips and Afghan burgers are sold in almost every major market and Afghan restaurants are recommended to every visitor to the city.

Traditional Afghan dishes are mostly meat based and are prepared using a lot of natural fat.

This is peculiar to the food of Afghanistan, as it helps locals weather the harsh temperatures of the Afghan winter. This is also why their diet consists of a lot of dried fruit and nuts. Unlike the food of their neighbours, Afghan cuisine uses very little spice and instead, salt is used to heighten the flavours of the meat itself.

The most popular Afghan dishes available in Islamabad include Afghani Kebabs, Afghani Tikkas, Kabuli Pulao and dumplings known as Munto.

Afghani kebabs are made with minced lamb meat and marinated in salt, pepper, onion and capsicums. Chunks of meat skewered with cubed tomatoes in between and barbequed over coal, lightly glazed with oil in the process. The tender kebabs and the acrid tomatoes embody a smoky taste that would make any meat eater’s mouth water.

But the authentic taste of tender lamb meat is in the Afghani Tikkas. Tikkas are cubed pieces of lamb meat threaded on a skewer with a piece of beef or lamb fat in between. When the skewer is put over the grill, the meat cooks in the juices released by the melting fat, which also adds a natural salty flavour to the meat. Both kebabs and tikkas are eaten with a vinegar and green chilli chutney and Kandahari Naans. These oversized naans are twice the size of a regular naan and use a lot of yeast.

Kabuli Pulao or Pilaf is the national dish of Afghanistan. Slow-cooked meat is served with lightly seasoned rice and lentils topped with sweet carrots, ground cardamom, raisins, almonds, walnuts and cashews.

Food from across the Western border has left a mark on the capital’s cuisine

There are a number of variations in the recipe for the rice dish and Islamabad’s two most famous Afghan restaurants use different recipes.

The Pak-Afghan restaurant at Peshawar Mor uses the Uzbek dump-pukht recipe, which entails simmering the rice in a rich stew of meat until the rice absorbs all the liquid in the pot.

Kabul Restaurant in Jinnah Supermarket cooks the meat and the rice separately using the “chaawal-saafia method”. However, both are rich in flavour and no accompaniment is needed to go with the pulao. The sweetness of the raisins cuts against the saltiness of the meat and the fried nuts add a pleasant crunchy texture to the soft rice.

The authentic taste of tender lamb meat is in the Afghani Tikkas. — Dawn

Another specialty that brings many to Afghan restaurants are traditional dumplings known as Munto. These are parcels of dough that can be loaded with anything from minced meat, lentils or vegetables, and served with a yogurt or tomato-based chutney and topped with dried mint leaves. A cup of steaming black tea or qehwa is the ideal way to round off a greasy, calorie-intensive meal at the Afghan restaurants and is said to help with digestion.

The oldest Afghan restaurant in Islamabad is the Pak-Afghan Restaurant at Peshawar Mor, which has been operating from the same spot for nearly 35 years.

Today, the bazaar boasts a variety of restaurants, offering everything from Lahori fish to Shinwari tikkas in large, brightly-lit shops.

Since there are other Afghan restaurants in the area, it takes a bit of asking around to find the oldest one: tucked away inconspicuously in the middle of the bazaar between shops selling clothes and household items.

The shop itself is quite sparsely furnished, but the flag of Afghanistan hangs proudly behind the counter.

Sher Ali (below, left) poses next to the Afghan flag, which is displayed proudly at nearly all major Afghan food outlets in the city. — Dawn

Its main competitor, the Kabul Restaurant in Jinnah Supermarket, is younger by a decade but sells so many kebabs and tikkas every night that the air around the market is laden with the aroma of barbequed meat and melting fat.

The restaurant offers an outdoor sitting area for those who prefer to sit next to the grill watching the meat being cooked, as well as an indoor divided into a ‘family’ hall upstairs and a men’s hall downstairs.

Large paintings, done in shades of brown and blue depict the dust coloured mountains of Afghanistan against blue skies; turbaned men and the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. Here too, the Afghan flag hangs behind the counter. Customers at the restaurant include foreign and local tourists and the restaurant is so busy on weekends that it is often difficult to get a table.

The Pak-Afghan Restaurant is jointly managed and owned by cousins Haji Kareem and Toriali Sher Ali. Haji Kareem migrated from Mazaar-i-Sharif in the early 1980s and Sher Ali joined him in 1990 from Kabul.

“Workers come and go here. Sometimes, cooks will just stay for a few months but since I am an expert cook myself we are able to maintain the same taste,” says Sher Ali.

“I used to run a restaurant in Kabul before the city was destroyed in the war. I still miss Kabul and now that things are getting better I plan to one day go back and reopen my old restaurant. President Hamid Karzai was a good man but Ashraf Ghani is even better and under him things in Afghanistan will return to normal again,” he says.

Published in Dawn, November 24th , 2014